2026 Mazda CX-5 Earns IIHS Top Safety Pick+ as Mazda Hits 100 Awards

The 2026 Mazda CX-5 has earned the IIHS Top Safety Pick+ award, the highest rating handed out by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and the result pushes Mazda’s total to 100 Top Safety Pick awards collected across nearly two decades of testing. Of those 100 wins, 74 carried the higher-tier Plus designation, including the CX-5’s new award.

A Ninth Plus Award and a New Benchmark for the Brand

Mazda started 2026 leading every automaker with eight Top Safety Pick+ awards already banked. The CX-5 result brings that count to nine, more than any other brand has claimed so far this year. The 2026 Mazda3 Sedan, Mazda3 Hatchback, CX-30, CX-50 (including the CX-50 Hybrid), CX-70, CX-70 PHEV, CX-90, and CX-90 PHEV all carry the same Plus rating, giving Mazda one of the widest safety sweeps of any automaker’s current lineup. That means every mainstream Mazda SUV sold in the US now carries the top rating, a rare clean sweep across an entire lineup.

“Earning an IIHS Top Safety Pick+ award for the 2026 CX-5 reflects Mazda’s commitment to protecting those who trust us with their safety every day,” said Jennifer Morrison, Mazda North American Operations Director of Vehicle Safety Strategy. IIHS President David Harkey credited the pace of change at the brand: “Mazda has consistently demonstrated a commitment to safety and acted quickly to improve its vehicles as our award criteria have evolved.”

The CX-5 first went on sale in the US in 2013, and this marks the compact SUV’s latest appearance on the Top Safety Pick+ list across more than a decade on the market. IIHS has tightened its criteria in nearly every year of the program’s run, a stretch dating back to 2008, adding tougher crash tests and raising the bar on headlight performance and crash-avoidance tech. That pace of change makes a streak of repeat wins harder to maintain than the trophy count suggests, especially for a nameplate that has stayed on sale largely unchanged in body structure for several model years.

The compact SUV class Mazda competes in has grown into one of the most heavily cross-shopped segments in the country, and safety scores increasingly separate finalists once buyers narrow a list down by price and size. A brand that can point to a full decade of strong crash results, rather than a single good year, has an easier case to make at the dealership than one relying on a single recent test cycle.

What It Takes to Win Top Safety Pick+

IIHS does not hand out its top rating lightly. Vehicles need good scores in the small overlap front test on both the driver and passenger sides, plus a good moderate overlap front score and a good side-impact result. Headlights across every trim level must rate acceptable or good, closing off a loophole that let automakers win awards on base-trim headlights alone in past years.

Front crash prevention adds another layer to the test. Standard systems must earn a good rating in the pedestrian detection test and at least an acceptable score in the newer vehicle-to-vehicle 2.0 evaluation, which tests how well a car avoids or reduces the severity of crashes with other vehicles at a range of speeds. Where automakers offer front crash prevention as an option rather than standard equipment, that system has to clear the same bar, closing another gap that once let base trims skate by on a technicality.

Why the Rating Counts for CX-5 Shoppers

A Top Safety Pick+ rating means more than a trophy for the shelf. Insurers frequently factor IIHS ratings into premium calculations, and resale values tend to hold up better on vehicles with a strong safety record. For a compact SUV competing against the Honda CR-V, Toyota RAV4, and Chevrolet Equinox, all shopped heavily by families, a Plus rating gives Mazda a concrete answer to a common buyer question rather than a marketing claim alone.

Mazda has set a goal of zero fatalities in its vehicles by 2040, and the automaker points to the CX-5 result as evidence its safety engineering keeps pace with criteria IIHS tightens most years. The CX-5 remains one of Mazda’s top-selling models in the US, and the new rating gives shoppers cross-referencing safety scores before a purchase one more reason to add it to a shortlist.

Nine current Plus-rated models out of Mazda’s US lineup also means buyers rarely have to trade safety scores for styling or price when shopping between Mazda body styles, from the compact CX-5 up through the three-row CX-90. Few brands can say every SUV they build wears the same top safety badge, and that consistency counts most for families cross-shopping different Mazda sizes rather than settling on one model from the outset.

The CX-5 competes in a segment where a single missed test result can knock a popular model off the Top Safety Pick+ list entirely, so repeating the award year after year takes more than one strong design cycle. Mazda’s engineers have had to revisit crash structures and sensor calibrations as IIHS updated its test protocols, work that shows up in the CX-5’s unbroken run on the list rather than in any single headline figure.

The IIHS is an independent, non-governmental safety-testing organization funded by the insurance industry, and its full ratings are available at iihs.org.